Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,7

I add, but so only I can hear it. Luke already knows what happened with me and Calix. “It doesn’t matter. It’s Devils’ Day, isn’t it? I’d be more surprised if strange shit didn’t happen.”

Luke doesn’t look convinced, but at least she nods and holds open the door to the classroom for me. As I head back inside, I take note of the Knight Crew and their desks, piled with gifts from their many admirers.

Calix has the most out of all of them, smirking at me with an expression that reminds me of spiders and dead things. Raz watches me, too, but Barron refuses to even acknowledge that I exist. If we’re in the hallway together, he’ll walk right into me, knock me out of the way and then move on like it never happened. Sonja chucks her cupcake at me, bloody frosting hitting me right in the chest and staining my uniform.

Our teacher, too occupied with a haul of Devils’ Day gifts on her own desk, doesn’t notice.

With a snarl, I take my seat in the back and decide that maybe, just maybe, I did hit Calix’s car on purpose this morning.

For years, I’ve endured whatever they could throw at me, fighting back just enough so they wouldn’t see me as a victim, but not so hard that they’d see me as an adversary.

I’m just not sure I can take it anymore.

“Don’t do something you might regret,” Luke whispers as I glare at the backs of their heads.

“I won’t,” I reply easily, but I’m pretty sure I’m lying.

No, I’m certain of it.

The town of Devil Springs where I was born and raised is, on most days, a fairly religious, conservative place.

But not on Devils’ Day.

On Devils’ Day, things get weird.

At lunch, I sit with Luke and April in the outdoor courtyard at the back of the school. Weather permitting, there’s a large window that opens up from the kitchen, allowing students to line up for food outside. Beyond the tall, black chain-link at the back of the campus, the Diamond Point forest sweeps up and away, blanketing the hills in red and orange leaves. Deciduous trees dominate the woods here, with occasional loblolly or shortleaf pines dotting the landscape with green.

On the opposite side of the courtyard, one of the girls sits painting pentagrams on the foreheads and hands of her friends while the others unzip duffel bags and show off diaphanous dresses in red or black silk, sack-like white gowns that look like they’re meant for a witch on her way to the stake, and crowns made of thorny branches or antlers.

“I wish it were Devils’ Day every day,” Luke says with a sigh, face planted in the palm of one hand. Her goblin mask is pushed up above her pixie-like face, dark eyes focused on the girls dancing in the center of the courtyard, the colorful ribbons in their hands knotted and tied with dried flowers. “This is the sort of world I want to live in, where people like Cami Alhambra wear gauzy fairy wings to school, and Barron Farrar sits and sketches like he’s an artist instead of an asshole.”

I glance over and find Barron—tall, broad-shouldered Barron with his short, rainbow Mohawk—sitting on the bench of one of the picnic tables, a sketchbook on his lap, charcoal smeared across the side of one hand. His dual-colored eyes (he has heterochromia, meaning one is brown while the other is blue) are focused on the page, but when he senses me looking, his gaze lifts up and catches on mine. The leather mask on his face turns his cold expression into something dangerous, like an icicle ready to fall and impale me. I turn away, but not before noticing the angry red gash on his left hand. Interesting.

“I don’t know about that,” I say, tugging my own mask back into place. “The break from boring is nice, but I could do without all the weirdness. Last year, I found Cami and her friends naked and dancing in the woods like witches.”

“Exactly!” Luke says, slapping her hands on her thighs and standing up. She spins to face us, reaching up to ruffle her short, blue hair. Crescent Prep used to have strict rules about unnatural hair color, eye color, tattoos, and piercings, but I think after a while they realized they had more important things to deal with and dialed back the dress code a bit. Part of me wonders if Raz wasn’t responsible for a big portion